A Bowl of Blistering Barnacles.

Cheetahs can scorch any race track. Cuckoos can sing any tune. Parrots can talk eloquently. Rats can travel to outer space. Chimps can be trained to paint. Horses can slog harder. Dolphins can think smarter. Rabbits can multiply faster. Dogs can teach us a lesson in love. Lions can offer us a doctorate on brutality. So what is the one thing that sets us apart from animals? I think it’s the act of cussing.

Cussing or the ability to use language colourfully to vent one’s anger, has done more for world peace than diplomacy or nuclear deterrence. Tragically, our society has rarely acknowledged the unsung contribution of swear words to mankind. We shall right this hideous and historic wrong by celebrating the Picasso of Profanity – Captain Archibald Haddock!

Haddock, the mealy-mouthed multi millionaire friend of Tintin, has a lot to offer to anyone whose lexicon of unparliamentary lingo begins and ends with F-words. With his genius to sculpt expletives out of even cyclotrons and gyroscopes, Captain Haddock is the undisputed God of Foulese.

You can rediscover the magic of Haddockery by deploying his unique creations in your everyday encounters with numbskulls, bloodsuckers and bashi-bazouks. When you spot the familiar silent visage of Manmohan, you can perhaps yell, ‘Certified Invertebrate!’ If that didn’t whet your appetite, you can try ‘Macrocephalic Mameluke’ or ‘Unfeeling ungulate’.

In case, some politicians are up in arms objecting to your insult, just shush them by saying, “Lily-livered bandicoots! You profiteering pachyderms will never understand what I am getting at. Go be your miserable pithecanthropic pickpocket self. And spare me your loathsome lubberscum!”

Talking like the Captain can make you feel good when you feel biliously bad-tempered. When a girl friend dumps you can thunder like ten thousand typhoons by shooting an SMS labelling her as a ‘two-timing troglodyte’.

When your boss denies you a raise, dismiss his as ‘blundering bird-brained bell bottomed balderdash’. When your colleague stabs you in the back, call him, a ‘cowardly cro magnon cannibal’. When your dad bugs you, put him in place with ‘anachronistic antediluvian autocratic Arabian aborigine’. That iconoclastic gobbledygook should work like a road roller road hog!